


Promo class

by belmanoir



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Established Relationship, Kevin/Rami, M/M, Not Kayfabe Compliant, RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 00:23:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7383496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Early on in his time at NXT, Rami is having a crisis of confidence about his promo skills. Kevin thinks phone sex will be good practice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promo class

“I don’t know if I can make it here without you,” Rami says in a rush. His fingers are too tight on the phone. “Today was promo class. Oh my god, they have this room where they tape you and then they play it back and make you watch yourself. It’s like a torture chamber. I kept fumbling words, and my accent is so freaking weird when I really listen to it, and—”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Kevin says. “You just got nervous. You’ll figure it out.”

“You keep saying that.” Rami is suddenly angry. What does Kevin know? “You also keep telling me that I just need to say the first thing that pops into my head, but there’s _nothing there,_ Kev. I’m not, like, holding back all this brilliance.”

“That’s because you’re nervous.” Kevin sounds extremely reasonable which just annoys Rami more. “You’ll get the hang of it. I, uh...” His voice lilts mischievously upwards. “I have an idea of something that might help. And I bring this up from a place of total nonselfishness, just so you know.”

“What?”

“You promised if you went to Florida that we could have phone sex.”

Rami’s palms start to sweat. He readjusts his grip on the phone. “Yeah, okay, but I didn’t mean...”

“You meant I would do most of the talking, I know.”

Rami feels a flash of guilt, because that’s exactly what he meant. “You know I’m a disaster at dirty talk.”

“I don’t know that, actually. I just know you won’t do it.”

“Because I can’t think of anything to say!”

“No, listen to me. Dirty talking is a great place to start. There’s no character, there’s no jokes, it’s just straight narration. Like calling a match. You’re great at that. Shut your eyes and picture it in your head. If I were there right now, what would you do?”

Rami is desperate to believe that Kevin can actually teach him to do this. He shuts his eyes and imagines Kevin is here, in the room. Next to him. He can bury his face in Kevin’s shoulder and smell his detergent and— “Kev, if I think about you being here right now I’m going to lose it.” 

“So what’s the worst that can happen? I’ve seen you cry before.”

Kevin doesn’t understand. Rami is barely holding it together. And he _has_ to hold it together. He has to be successful here because if he falls apart and can’t get his head in the game and he sucks, the WWE is not even going to want to look at Kevin.

Which he can’t say, because Kevin would be insulted and say he can make it to the WWE on his own, and that’s true obviously, but...they’ve always been a team. Steen and Generico. He wants to put them over. He wants to be so good that NXT _has_ to hire Kevin.

He also doesn’t want to cry and have Kevin be handling this whole thing better than he is, when Kevin is the one who got left behind.

“Look, can I be honest with you?” Kevin asks into the silence.

“Yeah.”

“If what you want is not to feel how badly you miss me, you don’t have to miss me at all. You can come home tomorrow. But if what you want is to be a WWE Superstar, and I think that it is, then you have to learn to do promo, and that means not being afraid to dig in there and let people see something real. There’s a lot of stuff you don’t even want _me_ to see. So what does that leave for the crowd?”

That...feels true. Like a little _ping_ in his heart.

“I miss you too,” Kevin says. “I fucking—I bought your shampoo, man. Like I ran out of shampoo, and I went to the store and I was standing there in the shampoo aisle and I picked yours up and smelled it and now I’m using your brand.”

Rami’s eyes fill and his throat hurts. Is that such a bad thing? He tries to decide.

“But I’m right here. You’re not doing this alone. Any of it.”

Rami squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on Kevin’s voice. “Okay. I’m gonna give it a shot.”

“Really?” He sounds delighted.

Rami swallows, trying to think of something to say. Kevin has set an absurdly high bar for dirty talking. One memorable night a few years ago he actually scripted their sex in choose-your-own-adventure format. Rami got eaten by aliens at one point.

“If you were here right now,” he starts, “I guess I’d...” He’d hug him. That’s not very sexy. “I’d probably just cling to you like a little octopus.” He shuts his eyes and imagines it, imagines curling around Kevin. “So I guess...I guess I’m behind you, and I...” He imagines taking Kevin’s cock in his hand, how it would feel, the familiar weight of it. “Never mind, I want...”

“Yeah?”

“I want to put you in my mouth,” he blurts out, his face going hot. “I want to taste...um, you know when you get turned on and you kind of leak a little—precum! That’s what it’s called, right? Oh my god, this is awful.”

“Fuck, Rami, don’t _stop_.”

Something in Kevin’s voice tips him off. “Are you jerking off right now?”

“Of course.”

“What are you wearing?” 

Kevin laughs. “What do you think I’m wearing? A T-shirt and shorts.”

“Which T-shirt?”

A pause, presumably while Kevin checks. “Guns N’ Roses, the one with the skull on it. You sure you don’t want me to send you a dick pic?”

The truth is he’d love a dick pic, but he’s already explained his privacy concerns, so instead of answering he tries to think of what to say next.

“You’re in the States, you know,” Kevin points out. “The FBI is probably listening to this phone call right now.”

“Well, at least they haven’t seen either of our dicks.” Oh god, why can't he think of anything sexy? 

“Come on,” Kevin says huskily. “Keep telling me how much you love sucking my cock.”

“That was really...that was doing it for you?” Even though it was awkward and terrible?

“Obviously. What, you don’t like hearing that I love to suck your cock?”

A jolt of lust hits him at the words. He always likes it when Kevin says that, actually, which is weird now he thinks about it because it’s obvious from the way Kevin sucks him, how he crams Rami in his mouth like he can’t get enough, his appreciative hums and slurps. But every time Kevin pauses to say _God I love sucking your cock_ it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened.

Because it’s not what he says that matters, right? It’s that he’s willing to say it out loud. Hearing something is a totally different thing from knowing it.

Rami has an epiphany about promo. He opens his mouth to tell Kevin and then remembers what they’re doing. Okay, first things first. He thinks he can do this now. “If I were going to rate my favorite activities in order, I’m pretty sure it would go: one, wrestling. Two, talking about wrestling with you. Three, sucking your cock.” Kevin breathes heavily into the phone. He’s touching himself right now, listening to Rami’s voice. “I love how it tastes, I love how it smells, I love how it feels in my mouth. I love the way you hold my head, like you’re setting me up for a move...” He thinks of something. It actually _pops into his head._ Not a fantasy or some kind of sex spot he wants to call, just a true thing. He takes a deep breath and says it. “When we first started sleeping together, I used to worry I’d get an erection in the ring when you grabbed my head.”

“Really?” Kevin sounds totally thrilled.

Why didn’t Rami ever tell him that before? He was embarrassed, he guesses. “Okay, I’m going to tell you something really embarrassing.” His nerves are tingling at what he’s about to confess but he’s also a little high on how well this is working. “But you have to promise never to tell anybody. Anybody, I mean it.”

“Who do you think I’m going to tell?”

“ _Kev._ ”

“I promise.”

“Last night I went on YouTube, and I queued up a bunch of old videos of us wrestling, and I jerked off.”

Kevin gasps. “Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

He makes a whining sound. “Which matches?”

“I love you, and I’m not going to answer that question because we’ll get sidetracked.”

“Good thinking. What finally pushed you over the edge?”

Rami’s face is flaming but he can hear Kevin panting so who cares? “I, um...well, I got...I got really turned on by this one moment where I was in the corner and you did a cannonball. I just knew what it felt like, you know? That impact, and I wanted it so bad, I wanted to feel you...anyway, I kept rewinding it and watching it again, and then I...I guess I was too into it and I didn’t want to pause to rewind, and the very next thing you did was put your boot on my neck and that was it. Stick a fork in me, I’m done.”

“That’s amazing,” Kevin says breathlessly. Which of course it isn’t, it’s probably actually kind of weird and sad, but if Kevin thinks so...everything is about context. 

If Kevin were here right now...

“I want you to fuck me,” he says with conviction. “Like, really hard. Until my teeth rattle. Until I can’t think about anything but your cock in my ass and how bad I want to come.”

“Okay.” Kevin sucks in a deep breath. “Okay, that was it.”

“Wait, what?”

“I came. You can stop.”

Rami doesn’t like that he couldn’t tell over the phone.

Kevin crows. “That was incredible, man. You had some kind of breakthrough.”

Oh yeah. “I did!” Rami says excitedly. “So here’s the thing, right? Saying something straight up is different than showing it. Fundamentally. Like, everyone _knew_ Steen loved Generico from watching our matches, right? But they were still dying for him to _admit_ it.”

“Wait, were we done? You didn’t come yet.”

“I know, I know, I just really want to talk to you about this. I can jerk off to old wrestling videos again later, it’s fine.”

“Okay, but...I mean, you’re hard, right? Like that turned you on too?”

“Yes, Kev, I have an erection,” Rami says impatiently. “I’m very turned on. If you were actually here...no, if you were actually here I would still want to talk to you about this before you fucked me, so listen to me please.”

“Just a second, let me clean up.”

Rami fidgets and listens to vague noises on the line.

“Okay, I’m back.”

“I’ve been trying to do promo the way _you_ do it. But I just—I can’t do it that way. You...you withhold things, right? You pretend you’re going to high five someone and then you don’t. Whatever it is they want, that’s what you won’t do. You leave them wanting more. And I always try to leave people satisfied, to give them what they want. To be open to them.” He’s waving his arms around even though Kevin can’t see him, the phone squished between his ear and his shoulder. “So it’s the same with promo. I thought I had to create something _new_ with it. Like, a story, or a persona, or a joke or a mystery or whatever. But I don’t. I can just say what’s going on with me and what I want in a straightforward way, and if I _mean_ it, that’s good television too.”

Kevin thinks about it. “Yeah. Yeah, I like it. And you’ve got one advantage.”

“What’s that?”

“You have a really nice voice.”

He already knew Kevin thought so, but it’s still nice to hear him say it. Something for Rami to hold on to when he's watching back video of himself.

This is going to work.


End file.
